CSA 2015: Week 4

This week we got: 2 scallions, a half bag of leaf lettuce, a bag of spinach, a half batch of kale, 4 packages of strawberries, and 6 eggs (not pictured):

CSA Week 4 (2015)

I had a potluck on Friday for the TESLing (Teaching English as a Second Language and Linguistics) academic group (grad students and faculty) at work, so I shared some of our bounty. I brought a spinach salad with shaved Parmesan cheese, scallions, Caesar dressing, and homemade chickpea croutons. Chickpea crouton recipes are like caramelized onion recipes: almost every recipe I read under-estimated the time it took for the beans to get crispy. The recipe I linked to above says an hour – and that’s the most accurate time estimate I found. Here’s a picture of the “croutons.” (I don’t have a picture of the finished salad, since I dressed it at work right before leaving for the potluck.)

Chickpea “Croutons”

I went a little off-script making these; here’s what I did:

Chickpea Croutons

Ingredients:

1 can of chickpeas

1 Tbsp olive oil

1tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1.5 tsp of Lawry’s seasoned salt

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400.

Mix olive oil and spices.

Then mix in rinsed and dried beans.

Lay beans out on parchment paper or a silicone baking-mat in a single layer.

Bake for 1 hour (or until crispy)

Shake beans every 15 minutes.

Cool completely and store in a cool dry area in an airtight container. I used a mason jar.

The kale and basil topped a pizza. And I added some salami and fresh mozzarella. I used crust and sauce that I had frozen from the last pizza I made.

kale pizza

I made more breakfast sandwiches with the eggs. I’ve been putting cut up scallions on most foods. And the lettuce and the strawberries were eaten without fanfare or preparation (beyond washing – and salad dressing when appropriate).